3-Day Weekend Huzzah!

It's almost a 3-day weekend, and I couldn't be happier about it!

I got really ambitious this week, in a multitude of ways.

First and foremost, I tried my hand at adapting a baking recipe.

I'm a huge fan of gooey, soft cookies.  I heard from a source that if one were to add vanilla instant pudding mix to most any cookie recipe, achieving a soft cookie works well.  I gave it a shot, and it worked beautifully!

I did about 3 trays of regular-sized cookies, and also made a mega-cookie so I could cut shapes out.

Normally I cut shapes out before baking, but the dough was ridiculously sticky, so I tried it after.  Success!

I cooked dinner a couple of nights, which for me is a fairly big thing (S is the cook in our family).  I made a hearty sausage-potato-spinach soup on Wednesday night, but S put cayenne pepper in when I wasn't looking and I spent the whole meal with a bright red face and tears running down my cheeks.  He officially had a fair amount of leftover soup all to himself.

I've had conferences with most of my students all week, so besides dealing with a few problems with students, school was pretty chill this week.  While I do have a bunch of papers and daily work to grade this weekend, it's be kind of nice to have a slightly easier grading/lesson planning week.

I enjoyed the snow that has finally come to Minnesota!  I hate lame winters.  If it's going to be cold and white outside, at least make it worth it and have a real winter! :)  Tuesday was a great day of cleaning, chores, and errands in the morning, then climbing, coffee, and dance in the afternoon and evening.  The snow just made it that much better! 

On the knitting front, I finished the first in a pair of super-fuzzy socks!

I was originally going to make these for the head of my dance studio, but I did some measurement wrong somewhere, and they fit my size 7 1/2-8 foot comfortably instead of her size 6 1/2 feet.  Oops.  I guess not make socks very often takes its toll on my ability to churn out gifted goods. 

Oh darn.  Guess I'll just have to keep them. :)

I did complete the second Sweetheart coffee sleeve yesterday for my roommate's Valentine's Day gift, but I won't post any pics since it looks the same as the last one (minus the giant kitten-nommed part).

Fun anecdote- my roommate opened her present and set it on her desk.  Guess who picked it up and started carrying around the apartment in her mouth?

Can't trust that cat with anything...